General Saltwater Aquarium

Your beautiful new display tank is up and ready for fish. You have come up with your stocking list and you are finally ready to buy your first fish but you aren’t confident on how to proceed. I am going to walk you through a basic acclimation and quarantine procedure. I want to throw in a...

image via fiji.travel Reef2Reef is all about finding and sharing unique content and we've come across a very unique opportunity to see the animals in your tank, in the ocean! Mark Callahan, aka “Mr. Saltwater Tank” has put together a trip tailored for reef junkies and he promises your non-reef...

This article is sponsored by Battlecorals I still spend a lot of time on the phone with fellow reefers who are having problems of the worst possible kind - and by that I mean - “head scratchers”. These are the issues where somewhere in your prized coral collection, one or more of them is...

As many of you have probably heard, Albert Thiel lost his battle with cancer on Sunday, April 23, 2017. His family needs our help as they have been financially devastated due to his exorbitant medical expenses. Randi Horlick started a gofundme campaign about 4 months ago to help them. Sadly, the...

Learning and Understanding This past fall and winter were a bit trying for my tanks due to the amount of travel I did and the resultant time away from my tanks. I have to admit that they were more neglected than they had been for quite some time and it showed. As a result, I lost a few corals...

I have had remarkable success feeding my corals Reef Nutrition products for over a year now, along with my homemade frozen recipe, Piscine PE Mysis shrimp, and Brightwell’s Vitamin products. When I started using Reef Nutrition’s Oyster Feast I was shown how to feed and after seeing how the...

Things to Consider Nano Reef Guide Some of us reefers have been in this hobby for many years, and some just a few months. No matter what time-frame you have spent reefing at some point a nano-reef could possibly catch your eye, and...

Time for some myth busting! One of my top frustrations is the myth that Tigriopus californicus are a "cold water species". I hear this from store owners and hobbyists ALL the time. This copepod is eurythermal. For those of you that don’t know the term, it describes an organism able to tolerate...

The Tidal 55 by Seachem- Review In the saltwater hobby we often say that hang on back (HOB) filters are not meant for saltwater, that they aren’t good enough. I still believe that, but there are times when an HOB filter is just what you need. A quarantine tank for instance, or a small reef tank...

Power interruptions are a fact of life. While some people may never experience one, most of us will, and it will pay to be prepared. Even if you’re an experienced aquarist with many years of success, my hope is that some of these ideas will be novel and provoke innovative thinking. With...

Tank Parameters Of Some Masters To this day one of the most frequently asked questions I get, and actually that many “old time hobbyists” get is “How do I get rid of the algae in my tank. My first question then is “what are the parameters of your tank’s water? Invariably the answer is my tank’s...

Beginner Coral: Candy Cane (Trumpet) Candy cane corals are excellent for beginners! They are relatively fast growers and tend to be forgiving of lackluster water quality. They come in several colors and are easily fragged. Candy canes are mostly inexpensive as well so they are very attractive...

Beginner Corals- Leathers All photos by: Melypr1985 Leather corals encompass a wide range of species. While there are many different types with different sizes, shapes, growth patterns and rates and even colors, they all have similarities. They are easy to care for, grow quickly, enjoy lower...

Spouse Doesn’t Get it? I’m sure most of us in this addicting hobby have been there. Hiding the receipt from your most recent trip to the fish store, getting home early so your spouse doesn’t catch you acclimating something new into the tank. The old stand-by “No honey, that’s always been in the...

What to look for when buying fish at your LFS Ideally, when you buy a fish you want it to be perfectly healthy, eating right away and have a guarantee that it won’t die right away. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case at most local fish stores. Our policy at the LFS I work at is “no returns, no...

Incrementalism in the Hobby There is an old Southern axiom of how to cook a bullfrog. You can’t just pop it into boiling water because as soon as it hits the hot water it will sense that the water is too hot so it will hop out. Instead you put it in cool refreshing water and then gradually...

ReefStock 2017 will be the tenth time that I host this fun, well-rounded reef show in my hometown of Denver Colorado. I was so young and inexperienced when I put together the first ReefStock back in 2008, I can't believe that it was successful or that the show would carry on to be an annual...

It’s been argued that reef aquariums cannot inspire enough positive change to offset their environmental cost. As aquarists, we often argue that reef tanks can show young people the underwater world in vivid detail and perhaps persuade them to defend it. Critics argue that chances are, most that...

The Past and Future of the Hobby At this time of year, we often look back on what has transpired in the past year both good and bad and think about it. For me, it was for the most part a good year in aquarium terms, as I wrote a fair amount, most of my tanks did well and I traveled more than I...

All images provided via copyright free image services. Every year, more and more products enter the reef keeping world, aimed at making aquarists believe that simply by adding the directed dose, they will achieve a measure of success. Some claim to clear up nitrate problems, while others claim...